Despite the advances in the therapeutic approaches,
health care protocols and policies, sepsis continues to be an important problem
in clinical medicine. High lethality of sepsis cases calls for a detailed and
critically important study of the pathophysiology of sepsis. In this review,
we discuss pathomechanisms of sepsis and the role of cytokines that are
released in sepsis. We propose that the systemic levels of cytokines are not
always reflecting the pathological picture and the immune status of the
patient. One of the emerging approaches which may bring an effective treatment
strategy exploits the endocannabinoid system for its immunomodulatory
properties. Following from that, the research in this particular field is very
important as it can bring understanding behind the complicated pathophysiology
of sepsis.